“But you are my girl, by right of discovery.  By the way, you’re not anybody else’s girl, are you?”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Well, in other words, then, are you engaged, betrothed, plighted, promised, bespoke——­”

Patty burst out laughing.  “I’m not any of those things,” she said, “but, if ever I am, I shall be bespoke.  I think that’s the loveliest word!  Fancy being anybody’s Bespoke!”

“Of course, it’s up to me to give you an immediate opportunity,” said Cameron, sighing.  “But somehow I don’t quite dare bespeak you on such short acquaintance.”

“Faint heart——­”

“Oh, it isn’t that!  I’m brave enough.  But I’m an awfully punctilious man.  If I were going to bespeak you, now, I should think it my duty to go first to your father and correctly ask his permission to pay my addresses to his daughter.”

“Good gracious!  How do you pay addresses?  I never had an address paid to me in my life.”

“Shall I show you how?” And Cameron jumped up and fell on one knee before Patty, with a comical expression of a make-believe love-sick swain.

Patty dearly loved fooling, and she smiled back at him roguishly, and just at that moment Philip Van Reypen came into the room.

In the dim half-light he descried Patty on the divan and Cameron kneeling before her, and, as Mr. Van Reypen was blessed with a quick temper, he felt a sudden desire to choke the talented Mr. Cameron.

“Patty!” Philip exclaimed, angrily.

“Yes, Philip,” said Patty, in a voice of sweet humility.

“Come with me,” was the stern command.

“Yes, Philip,” and Patty arose and walked away with Van Reypen, leaving Kit Cameron still on his knee.

“Well, I’ll be hammered!” that gentleman remarked, as he rose slowly and deliberately dusted off his knee with his handkerchief; “that girl is a wonder!  She’s full of the dickens, but she’s as sweet as a peach.  I always did like blondes best, whether she believes it or not.  But if I hadn’t, I should now.  There’s only one girl in the world for me.  I wonder if she is mixed up with that Van Reypen chap.  He had a most proprietary manner, but all the same, that little witch is quite capable of scooting off like that, just to tease me.  Oh, I’ll play her own game and meet her on her own ground.  Little Poppycheek!” With a nonchalant air, Mr. Cameron sauntered back to the music-room, and seated himself beside Miss Curtiss, with whom he struck up an animated conversation, not so much as glancing at Patty.

Patty observed this from the corner of her eye, and she nodded her head in approval.

“He’s worth knowing,” she thought; “I’ll have a lot of fun with him.”

The programme was almost over, but Kit was to play once again.  With Marie, he played a fine selection, and then, as he was tumultuously encored, he went back to the platform alone.  Without accompaniment he played the little song, “Beware,” that Patty had sung, and, improvising, he made a fantasia of the air.  He was clever as well as skilled, and he turned the simple little melody into thrilling, rollicking music with trills and roulades until the original theme was almost lost sight of, only to crop up again with new intensity.